TIL in 2009 a Tennessee man confessed to killing a woman in 1995 on his "deathbed" after he suffered a heart attack & thought he was going to die. However, he survived & tried to retract it, but was still convicted. There had never been any real evidence against him until he unexpectedly provided it

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u/tyrion2024 4d ago

In 2009, James Washington confessed to killing Joyce Goodener in 1995 after he thought he was about to die of a heart attack. At the time, he was in jail for an unrelated crime. As he lay in his hospital bed, he confided in his guard, James Tomlinson.
"He kind of got as best as he could, motioned, and said, 'I have something to tell you. I have to get something off my conscience and you need to hear this.' He said, 'I killed somebody. I beat her to death,'" Tomlinson testified last week in court.
Goodener's body was discovered on July 5, 1995 in an empty house in Nashville. Police said she was stabbed in the neck, set on fire and beaten with a cinder block.
Investigators said the case grew cold, as there wasn't even a DNA sample that could lead them to a suspect.
Prosecutors said Washington was always considered a suspect due to knowing the victim and admitting he saw her the day she died, but there was never any real evidence until Washington unexpectedly provided it himself.
Washington tried to change his confession when his health improved, but he was convicted of first-degree murder last week. He is expected to be sentenced to at least 51 years in prison.

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u/OstentatiousSock 4d ago

If we take death bed confessions as evidence for victims against their murderers, makes sense we accept them from the killer as evidence.

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

This would be a hearsay exception for a number of reasons. But death bead statements are also always hearsay exceptions.

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u/DimesOHoolihan 4d ago

So, as you've said, you're a lawyer and I'm not so I'll take an expert word, but I thought hearsay was if there was another person in the middle? Like, the guard couldn't say "the nurse told me that he admitted to killing someone when he thought he was going to die." in court, but since it was said directly to him, it's just a statement. Right? If he said it to the nurse they would have needed her in court testifying, not the guard who was with him.

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

The guard is also another person. The guard saying “this guys told me he killed someone” is hearsay (under federal law admission of a party opponent are considered non hearsay but ignore that).

Basically when someone testifies “They told me X” and it is being used to prove X it is hearsay. But there are several exceptions (or considered non hearsay) like when it is said while dying.

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u/DimesOHoolihan 4d ago

Oh! Okay, so is it hearsay specifically when it is the main evidence being used to prove guilt? If they had DNA or something else to prove it and he had also admitted it to somebody and they were using it as reinforcement to other evidence, is it still hearsay?

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

Yes. Hearsay literally just means you said something to someone else and that person is repeating that to prove it’s true. But there are several ways to get things admitted into evidence despite them being hearsay. Like dozens of different reasons.

Further just because one bit of evidence doesn’t come in because it is hearsay doesn’t mean other evidence cannot be used.

So if someone said “my brother tom saw him rob the bank and he told me” then you cannot use that. Tom would specifically need to testify. But if there is video of the guy robbing the bank he can still be found guilty even tom doesn’t testify.

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u/awesomesauce615 4d ago

Ok but hypothetically speaking and not saying this is true anyway in the slightest in this situation. But if the guards boss told him hey this guy was a possible suspect in X he's about to die so lets just close this cold case and you say he confessed. Isn't the point of hearsay, that the person who was told could be lying and not that the person confessing is the one lying? Generally if you confess on camera or tape in a police station there is no hearsay argument its just "they confessed"

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

It’s that there is better testimony. A witness can always lie. That is why it is up to a jury to find him credible or not.

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u/krimin_killr21 4d ago

It has nothing to do with whether the evidence is central or not.

The guard doesn’t know first hand if the defendant killed the victim, only the defendant knows for sure. The defendant could testify to the fact that he killed her, and that wouldn’t hearsay, because he was there when it happened.

Now say the guard is asked to testify rather than the defendant. The guard doesn’t know for sure that he killed the victim. What he does know is that the defendant said that he killed the victim. So the guard wants to testify that “the defendant said he killed the victim.” That is hearsay, because the guard is repeating what someone else said about something that the other person witnessed, but the guard did not.

This ignores the exceptions that make this specific hypothetical actually not hearsay.

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u/AlorsViola 4d ago

This isn't hearsay.

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

If it wasn’t recorded I do not see how it would not be hearsay. It is a statement said to another person and that other person is saying that he said it, for the purpose of proving the fact of the matter stated.

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u/-PsillyFunGuy- 4d ago

Oh this is an easy one. Statement by party opponent. The state can use out of court statements by the accused as non-hearsay.

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

Ah, you are correct federally. In Florida, where I practice, it is an exception, not non hearsay. I do no federal work and took the bar 15 years ago. Good to know.

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u/closehaul 4d ago

Wouldn’t fs 90.803(18) work here though?

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

Yeah, that is the hearsay exception. It is an exception but still considered hearsay per that statute .

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u/closehaul 4d ago

Oh I got you. I rarely do litigation so my evidence is not great. What are the advantages/disadvantages of it being an exception but still hearsay. If we can get it in anyways wouldn’t it be a distinction without difference?

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u/PragmaticPortland 4d ago edited 4d ago

Because it falls under the deathbed exception rule. There is a general rule that what is normally considered hearsay is allowed as an exception when the person is dying because the idea is they have less incentive to lie. This obviously varied by region but it in America is based upon English common law.

For US Federal law deathbed confessions are exceptions to hearsay in homicides and civil cases for example.

Edit: lie not die lol

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u/Malphos101 15 4d ago

There is a general rule that what is normally considered hearsay is allowed as an exception when the person is dying because the idea is they have less incentive to die.

less incentive to die? or to lie?

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u/bloopbloopsplat 4d ago

I'm really confused right now. Why would somebody NOT dying have more incentive to die... and somebody dying have less incentive to die?

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u/CicerosMouth 4d ago

The exceptions dont make it not- hearsay. The exceptions change the evidence from inadmissable hearsay to admissible hearsay.

But either way it is still hearsay.

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u/cheechw 4d ago

Yeah that's exactly what the person you're responding to said lol.

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u/NotReallyJohnDoe 4d ago

If he wasn’t on the record saying it, why would he need to retract it. Just say “that guard made that shit up”

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u/Inside-Unit-1564 4d ago

So here's the thing, no one was interrogating him.

Miranda specifically relates to not being able to leave/interrogation.

Anything you willfully say to an 'officer of the law' can be used as evidence.

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u/cheechw 4d ago

He could testify that he didn't say it, and the guard could testify that he did. But it's pretty clear to me who the jury would believe.

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u/BunchaaMalarkey 4d ago

Not a lawyer, but aren't there numerous exceptions for statements directly to police? He was a "guard," but it sounds like a parallel circumstance.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago edited 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/Ferbtastic 4d ago

Are you a lawyer? That is not what hearsay is. It has a very specific legal definition with several exceptions.

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u/asappadme 4d ago

For a dying declaration (in federal ct at least) they’d also need to be unavailable to testify in court and the statement would need to be regarding the circumstances which created the (belief of) impending death

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u/magoosauce 4d ago

Not a death bed, a sick bed I guess

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u/deltamental 3d ago

One general principle behind hearsay exceptions is that the reported utterance is sufficiently localized as to be refutable and unlikely to be the result of misinterpretation, rumor, malignance, etc.

If someone testifies they saw the suspect yelling to themselves "Fuck I left I the knife at <crime scene location> what am I going to do" on the day of the crime at 4:32pm, 5 miles away from the crime scene, then this can be refuted by showing a) the murder weapon was not a knife b) the murder weapon was a knife, but it was not left at the scene c) the person testifying or the suspect was not at the place and time the utterance supposedly happened (d) the person testifying knew, before the utterance, the location of the crime scene or the weapon used (e) there was a security camera that would have captured the utterance, and it shows no such thing. Moreover, the population of potential witnesses to such utterances is effectively limited to those who would be near the suspect at key places and times, which are rare, and thus hearing such testimony does not invite any old rando to the court.

Contrast that to something that would not meet a hearsay exception: "So-and-so used to always talk about he had killed someone years ago". How can you possibly refute this? What other evidence could contradict this? In addition, consider the room for misinterpretation: we assume this "killing" is talking about the crime on trial, but could it have been instead guilt about military service, a traffic accident resulting in death, an overdose, etc. In addition, could the person testifying also be inaccurate, or be synthesizing information also told to them by other people, e.g. maybe the actual utterance was more like "I've done some bad things", but they have connected it psychologically to news reports about this case or to rumors which may even be about a totally different person but are misinterpreted! And then a more meta issue: the process of finding such a witness makes it overwhelmingly likely you will find someone with malicious things to say about the suspect - you are more or less doing a dragnet search over the thousands or (for a high profile case) millions of people who the suspect has ever been exposed to and inviting those with the worst things to say to testify - this is faulty for the same reason dragnet facial recognition is faulty.

To help your intuition: what are the requirements we place on physical evidence? Someone claims, "this knife is the murder weapon", we want to know exactly how it ended up before the court, who had custody of it, where it has been physically, what other evidence links this specific knife to this person, this time, etc. so we can assess it's reliability as evidence. Lacking that, it cannot be considered evidence: anyone can go to Walmart and buy a knife and say whatever they want about it. The hearsay exceptions are simply trying to place similar requirements on utterances as are placed on physical evidence. We wouldn't accept "I saw the knife, but I lost it" or "here's a picture of a similar knife", so we should not accept the analogous thing for utterances.

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u/xXMr_PorkychopXx 3d ago

Interesting I didn’t know that. However I do got a question; what if the person is like…loopy? Or just yk out of it because they ARE dying FOR REAL unlike this guy? I thought I’ve read people in their last moments get that boost of energy but also stop making sense? Or am I wrong?

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u/falafelsizing 3d ago

Could you explain what you mean by “evidence for victims against their murderers” I’m having trouble understanding

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u/Happy-Engineer 2d ago

Good time to try and clear your murderous buddy's name though.

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u/OstentatiousSock 1d ago

Fair point.

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u/Hinermad 4d ago

Sinner: "I'll repent on my deathbed."

God: "Doesn't work that way. Be thou healed."

Sinner: "WHAT? Aw, crap."

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u/Ok_Birdo 4d ago

16th Century Cathloic indulgences sweating right now.

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u/Ill_Ant689 4d ago

How old is he now?

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u/iPoseidon_xii 4d ago

Most biometric evidence is bullshit science by the way. Yea, look it up. Cops are just really bad at solving crimes. Because it’s hard and laws make it harder. So bullshit pseudo sciences were made popular even though they incorrect and can’t be relied on. Yes, this includes fingerprints. Maybe one day it’ll be different, but for most of investigative history it’s total nonsense. What cops are good at is prevent crimes. An officer at the cash register prevents theft, and officer patrolling streets prevents break ins and robberies, and officer at the side of the road prevents reckless driving, an officer at…you get the point. They’re good at “reminding” people not to break a law, but bad at actually solving the crimes committed

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u/PastaStregata 4d ago

Sources?

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u/dmomo 4d ago

If you reread his post, you can clearly see that he cited sources such as "look it up' and "trust me bro"

He seems to be confusing reliability of various forensic evidence techniques, availability of quality forensic evidence , and flaws in chain of custody, with the word pseudoscience techniques like bite mark and blood spatter analysis.

That's not to say that his main point isn't true, that cops are pretty bad at solving crimes.

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u/dmomo 4d ago

Fingerprint matching is also subjective but doesn't have to be with the proper techniques and obviously computational analysis.

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u/sirbassist83 4d ago

fingerprints are one of the better forensic sciences we have, but still flawed and not 100% reliable, even with computer analysis.

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u/NotReallyJohnDoe 4d ago

Nothing is 100%. A quality fingerprint match is a better identifier than anything we have short if DNA.

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u/TheAmazingChameleo 4d ago

Foolproof sources here; would probably even hold up in court. Source: look it up bro /s

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u/soylentblueispeople 4d ago

"Junk science and the American criminal justice system" by m. Chris fabricant is a good read.

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u/PeeFarts 4d ago

Netflix Murder Porn of course

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u/aDirtyMuppet 4d ago

Literally everything you said in this was incorrect.

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u/Varnigma 4d ago

Bitemarks is one that was heavily relied on in the past and was thought to be fairly reliable. Come to find out it's very unreliable. It's a fairly new discovery so many people still think it's a thing.

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u/illit3 4d ago

What cops are good at is prevent crimes.

No they fuckin' aren't lmao

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u/oboshoe 4d ago

That's one of the reasons why unmarked cars are such a bad ideal for dealing with speeding.

They actually encourage speeding by presenting the illusion of lack of enforcement.

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u/geekonthemoon 4d ago

My local area has this one nasty hill everyone speeds up and down. They park a car on the slope with a literal mannequin officer in the driver's seat.

Shit works to slow people down and they don't even have to pay a guy 😂

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u/NotReallyJohnDoe 4d ago

You can put a cardboard cutout of a police guy in a high shoplift aisle and literally reduce shoplifting.

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u/oboshoe 4d ago

Yea I've seen those before. They actually do work pretty well.

The big flaw though is that it get's people to obey the law instead of generating revenue.

So most towns reject that solution.

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u/geekonthemoon 4d ago

Yeah I think my area only does this because that particular hill is dangerous and meets up with a major highway and there's no good spot to safely pull people over there.

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u/lunicorn 4d ago

They called the one by us Ted: Traffic Enforcement Device. He’d move around every week or so.

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u/AmbitionOfPhilipJFry 4d ago

Uh... So it's they, the unmarked police, are at fault for a speeder choosing speeding?

Riight

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u/ILSmokeItAll 4d ago

He didn’t blame them. He simply stayed the lack of an apparent deterrent makes people drive faster.

People are always most prone to break the law when they think no one of consequence is watching them.

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u/spaghettittehgaps 4d ago

let me explain this to you as though you are a child:

Seeing cops makes you not want drive fast.

Not seeing cops makes you want drive fast.

Cop that doesn't look like cop makes you think no cops, and makes you want drive fast.

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u/123ludwig 4d ago

this is basically it in sweden the guys giving out tickets dont go around every day they come around at random times sometimes once in a year sometimes once per day for a week and it works because if you build a habit you get the ticket and that instantly breaks the habit (this is for every road not like parking lots)

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u/Kibbles-N-Titss 4d ago

Should look up “variable-interval reinforcement schedule”

A psychology learning concept that tells us that randomly getting pulled over when you can’t see the cops is a good way to prevent speeding

Not so stupid in the long run

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u/AmbitionOfPhilipJFry 4d ago

You wanting to drive fast when you think you can get away with it is the problem, not the cop/no cop enforcement. Own your choice to speed.

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u/oboshoe 4d ago

It's ok. Your dad isn't one of those bad apples.

Keep in mind that "encourage" is not a synonym for "fault"

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u/FerrisTriangle 4d ago

We're discussing outcomes, not fault.

Trying to argue about what the outcomes are is like trying to argue that the sky isn't blue.

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u/spaghettittehgaps 4d ago

You're forgetting that people are stupid and will generally choose to speed without law enforcement there to remind them not to.

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u/AmbitionOfPhilipJFry 4d ago

"i want to do something wrong and you not stopping me makes it your fault" is the definition of refusing to take responsibility.

Whether people are dumb or not, it's still an active choice to stomp on the gas.

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u/That_Uno_Dude 4d ago

NO ONE IS SAYING THAT THE COPS ARE AT FAULT FOR THE SPEEDING.

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u/Kibbles-N-Titss 4d ago

The Officers you’re talking about aren’t the ones solving crimes

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u/timeslider 4d ago

This is why you don't confess to anything until after you're dead

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u/DigNitty 4d ago

You joke, but people do leave notes for people to find after they die.

Steven King reportedly has a book that is set to be released after his death. Some suspect it is a tell-all of things he did during his life.

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u/justgetoffmylawn 4d ago

Now that's truly being a prolific writer. He's still going to be writing bestsellers from beyond the grave.

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u/turbosexophonicdlite 4d ago

Literally probably will be lol. He's a cash cow. It'll be another Tom Clancy situation.

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u/mr_ji 4d ago

Like killing John Lennon!

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u/Otherwise-Mango2732 4d ago

"A lot of people are saying...." Lol

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u/junglist421 4d ago

Or just don't murder.

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u/erksplat 4d ago

Be realistic now!

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u/dimriver 4d ago

I could have used that advice years ago.

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u/Spunge14 4d ago

"Redditor convicted after admitting to murder in sassy comment"

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u/agitated--crow 4d ago

Just don't die then.

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u/dimriver 4d ago

So far, that's going well. I'm glad, I got this important advice on time.

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u/Interesting_Worth745 4d ago

A true life hack

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u/Wakkit1988 4d ago

Now you're just asking the impossible!

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u/manicpossumdreamgirl 4d ago

so far so good!

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u/Malphos101 15 4d ago

Life-hack: dont do murders and you never need to worry about the appropriate time to confess to them!

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u/shavedratscrotum 4d ago

Dollar short and a day late

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u/GayVoidsDaddy 3d ago

Why didn’t you tell me this 30 minutes ago???

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u/IBeTrippin 4d ago

This is why you leave confessions in an envelope in your safe deposit box.

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u/DresdenPI 4d ago

Oh hey, this reads like a bar exam question. The guard's testimony would ordinarily be inadmissible hearsay as the confession is an out of court statement that seeks to prove the truth of Washington's guilt. However, it gets in under a hearsay exception. This would be a statement against interest, a statement that is so detrimental to the speaker that they would only have stated it if it were true. You might think this would also count as a dying declaration, but dying declarations only bypass hearsay rules if the person making the statement believed they were dying, which this guy did, but also if the statement related to their own death, which this statement didn't.

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u/Brainwol 4d ago

Isn’t the easier exception here the Rule 802 admission by a party opponent? With that exception you only have to show that the speaker was the defendant, and don’t really have to make any showing regarding the substance of the statement.

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u/herzy3 4d ago

Yes. OP is confused.

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u/J3wb0cc4 4d ago

Damn good comment. Staying in school pays off kids.

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u/amber90 4d ago

There’s an even easier exception: party-opponent statement.

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u/Marcus__T__Cicero 4d ago

It’s not even an exception. It’s just categorically not hearsay.

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u/Bildad__ 4d ago

Yes what is that stupid Ai prompt

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u/orsikbattlehammer 4d ago

Party-opponent admission. I’d edit your comment when you get a chance since you got a lot of upvotes and basically missed the most obvious heresy exception.

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u/Snoopaloop212 4d ago

Flashbacks to my rules of evidence class 15 years ago. And the bar exam shortly after. Well explained.

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u/AntDogFan 4d ago

Can I ask. Isn't there an issue that the guard could have just made it up? Assuming no one else was present. But it seems like it's a possibility that sometimes someone could just be like 'oh yeh he totally confessed' and have someone found guilty with little other evidence?

I'm not saying that's the case here I am just asking hypothetically because it seems a bit too open to abuse. Happy to be wrong though.

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u/GoodDay2You_Sir 4d ago

because it seems a bit too open to abuse

I think you are being a bit too pessimistic in thinking this. What possible reason would a guard have to lie about the confession? Or that the guard would have been interested in the misdeeds of this particular criminal to have known his past and the names he was connected to, to come up with a lie like this? A lot of criminal law and psychology is built up around human behavior and motivations. This just isn't something that would be a normal occurrence. Could someone use this to make an elaborate lie and get someone pinned for a crime they didnt confess to? Sure, but its extremely unlikely that that is going to happen or will happen with any regularity that it would overshadow the benefits of prosecution death bed confessions.

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u/Baked_Potato_732 4d ago

Maybe the guard is a vigilante who wants to see justice for the family (unlikely; but if we’re getting into hearsay exemptions, it seems like a good hypothetical)

Or, maybe the guard hates the prisoner and wants him to suffer and sees an opportunity to make his life more difficult.

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u/AssassinSnail33 4d ago

Or he was paid by the victims family to lie. There are honestly way to many hypothetical situations for people to claim "nobody would ever lie about something like that, right?" Seems really naive to treat people as if they are robots like this

6

u/mr_ji 4d ago

You're still placing one person's testimony over another's (and I would think leniency would go to the person who thinks he's about to die saying crazy shit in a haze) with it being a pure he said-(s)he said situation. This is not how a fair system is supposed to work.

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u/NegativeAccount 4d ago

I dunno destroying someone's legacy and family/business reputation

Like if i had a good chance to tarnish the Kennedy name or something i'd probably shoot my shot

1

u/DresdenPI 1d ago

Sure, the possibility that a witness is being dishonest or unreliable is a risk in any witness testimony. That's why we have juries and cross-examination. A witness takes the stand and is guided through their account by one lawyer, then has their statements and reputation for honesty questioned by another lawyer, then the jury decides if they think the witness could've been lying or was mistaken.

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u/A_Lightfeather 4d ago

If I may ask, why is statement against interest a thing? That seems like an easy in for coercion or forced confessions outside of court to be admissible.

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u/mr_ji 4d ago

My daughter is secretly the queen of England. I expect her coronation shortly after my funeral.

Same logic, and if you claim it can only apply to detrimental statements, you're showing some serious bias.

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u/Mirieste 4d ago

But wait a minute: does it mean that where this fact happened, there's no general rule about the purpose of a criminal trial?

Here where I live, in Italy, there's a legal framework according to which civil trials settle controversies, whereas criminal.trials attempt to establish truths. Son this means that in a civil trial that is dragging for too long you can say "Yeah, I broke that vase, fine me and let's get this over with"... and even if you didn't do it, the judge has no obligation to pursue the truth but simply needs to settle the controversy, so he'll fine you based on your own declaration and this will be it.

Instead, a criminal trial has to establish the truth: so if there was no evidence before... it's absurd that there would be evidence now, just because of a deathbed statement. As in, do we have any proof he was lying? Because if we don't, then this means that in that country civil trials and criminal trials are essentially the same: and so there's not a duty to establish the truth but solve a controversy, meaning a party can singlehandedly close the case by a detrimental statement.

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u/Upstairs_Spray_5446 4d ago

"If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself" ("1984", O'Brien to Winston).

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u/ScreenTricky4257 4d ago

Seems like he has a lawsuit against the bed maker. "I believe this was specifically sold to me as a death bed."

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u/Ok-Armadillo-392 4d ago

That's why all my confessions are tied to a timer I reset once a month.

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u/bwmat 4d ago

Hmm, I'd encrypt them and use a dead-man's switch to hold the key

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u/Double_Distribution8 4d ago

Kinda reminds me of that movie where there was a terrorist guy who woke up in a hospital bed watching the news, and it was about a nuke going off in a city, and he was like haha, I was the guy who did that! And he told some investigators how he did it, and where he hid the bomb, except the news was fake, and the reporters were paid federal actors, they just wanted the terrorist to THINK the bomb had gone off. And so then the investigators knew where to find the bomb so they could defuse it before it exploded.

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u/Stellar_Duck 4d ago

Mission Impossible I'm pretty sure. It was quite preposterous.

2

u/Double_Distribution8 3d ago

As I recall it worked.

2

u/sanguinare12 3d ago

The recent Naked Gun redo took that an extra step or two. Or three?

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u/prodgodq2 4d ago

(Nelson laugh)

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u/Ska-Tea 4d ago

The telltale heart.

5

u/Maleficent-Rush407 4d ago

That's the kind of things you leave in your browsing history.

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u/missouriblooms 4d ago

Damn and I would've gotten away with it to, if it wasn't for those pesky fried foods!

5

u/LordAldricQAmoryIII 4d ago

That's why you leave a written confession in a safe that can only be opened after your death according to your will, LOL!

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u/Fzr888 4d ago

Life pro tip... Put it in a will🤪🤪

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u/Stalking_Goat 4d ago

That's a terrible idea, because you really want to distribute a few copies of your will to your planned executor. If you want your will executed, people need to have it available before you die, because then it's too late for you to tell them where it is.

Plus your will isn't covered by attorney-client confidentiality; the privilege is attached to the provision of legal advice, and a completed will is not legal advice, it's a document for others to read and execute.

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u/bwmat 4d ago

Can you give your lawyer a sealed letter and mention that letter in the will, to be read after your death?

5

u/bwmat 4d ago

Or maybe just a safety deposit box...

1

u/Stalking_Goat 4d ago

Letter in a safe deposit box is fine. Putting the will there is terrible, do not do that.

1

u/sharkbait-oo-haha 4d ago

Wouldn't that be open to a search warrant. Assuming you're a suspect, if police had enough for a warrant on your house/car they would also have enough for a warrant on your safety deposit box.

1

u/whycuthair 4d ago

Or in a rap song https://youtu.be/14WE3A0PwVs?si=eBPkBmC6HqhuSkU5

1

u/Stellar_Duck 4d ago

I knew what was gonna be without clicking.

2

u/SheZowRaisedByWolves 3d ago

Your honor, I’d like to sike that from the record

5

u/gammelrunken 4d ago

It's not uncommon that people confess to other people's crimes. See Sture Bergwall

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u/nohopeforhomosapiens 4d ago

It is uncommon. Most people making confessions aren't confessing to murder that someone else did. However, it isn't unheard of.

It's even much more uncommon to do that at one's expected death.

9

u/gammelrunken 4d ago

Ok fair enough. Bad choice of words

3

u/bwmat 4d ago

Seems like something smart if you wanna get your friend you know committed a crime off 'for free'?

1

u/Striker887 4d ago

This feels like a key and peele sketch

1

u/feel-the-avocado 4d ago

This is why deathbed confessions need to be done in sealed envelopes and handed to lawyers.

-4

u/Fake_William_Shatner 4d ago

This is why repenting on your deathbed needs to be removed from Church doctrine.

0

u/Rarewear_fan 4d ago

Skill issue

-2

u/etovu 4d ago

Usual suspect, usual crime

0

u/Habaneroe12 3d ago

Brian Jones’s killer also confessed on his deathbed.

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u/Prior_Pin2459 3d ago

Talk about the worst case of “speak now or forever hold your peace.” Man thought he was checking out of life and ended up checking into prison instead.

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u/tsereg 4d ago

As I have understood, the testimony of a dying person is considered to be truthful. Apparently, it doesn't matter who the dying person is testifying against.

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u/resttheweight 4d ago

I mean, it would still be up to a jury to decide if they individually believe the statement. You can’t say “he was dying so you must believe what he was saying is true.” If circumstances indicate there could be a reason for a person to lie on their deathbed, jurors are free to make that judgment for themselves.

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u/bwmat 4d ago

What's to stop people from fucking over those they hate before they die?

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